After Journey's End
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: AU. The Doctor thinks back about the hellish adventure with Davros, Rose and the reality bomb and considers his future and muses about his past and some of his mistakes and what he wants to do to avert more.


Disclaimer - I don't own Doctor Who. Same as usual.

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After taking his jacket off after being soaked in the rain while the Earth's atmosphere healed itself from the enforced atmospheric shell imposed on it when the Daleks moved the planet across space to the Medusa cascade and leaning against the TARDIS console, the Doctor looked around broodingly. Well, that was it - he was alone. Everyone had gone - Sarah Jane, Jack, Martha, Mickey had gone with them since he had nothing in Pete's world anymore since his grandmother had since passed away, Rose and Jackie were back in Pete's world, and now Donna had left him, deciding that while she loved travelling with him she would rather be safe on Earth, and she said she hoped that she would use what she'd learnt to get a better life for herself. The Doctor smiled as he remembered his reply, "Donna Noble, I'd be surprised if you didn't already have a better life."

She'd smacked him in the arm before giving him a warm hug before he left in the TARDIS, getting soaked in the process after restoring Earth's to its rightful space/time coordinates and then leaving quietly. Truthfully, he was sure that Donna had left because she was seeing how dark he was becoming after that mess with Midnight and that time he was captured by those humans shortly afterwards, and just wanted out before she too was swallowed up, and he couldn't blame her for leaving even if he felt her loss.

Now he had time to think for himself after dealing with Davros and the Daleks. The Doctor closed his eyes, feeling sick just thinking about the twisted Kaled scientist who'd created the Daleks, he'd known for years how long Davros had spent trying to build the Daleks into the ultimate warriors fit to take control of the cosmos. But he had never imagined Davros would tear his own body to pieces just to create a new race of Daleks, but he should have known Davros would go to any lengths to indulge in his sick fantasies. Like his fourth incarnation had told the Kaled council during the Time Lord's mission to Skaro to avert their creation, Davros was willing to perpetuate himself in the Daleks.

But Davros was dead now.

He hoped.

The Doctor closed his eyes and thought back to the recent crisis. Ever since he'd learnt that Rose was coming back into the universe after spending who knew how many years of her life in Pete's world, and when he and Donna had materialised back on Earth only for the planet to be yanked away, he'd known it was nothing good.

At the time he and Donna hadn't known what to do, what to think, so they'd gone to the Shadow Proclamation. He'd never really dealt with the organisation before, never needed to either, just used their laws to get his way, but he knew one thing he was probably not very popular with them now ever since he'd left them in the middle of declaring war on who was behind the spate of planetary kidnappings. The Shadow Architect had sneered at him for not being as knowledgeable as the legends of the Time Lords claimed, not that he cared - it wasn't his fault the Time Lords had neglected to fit their TARDISes with standard communications equipment giving them knowledge of what was going on throughout space/time.

He had to admit it was clever of the Daleks to put all the planets behind a temporal pocket, in a place the Doctor hadn't been to since he was 90 years old, the Medusa cascade. The Doctor had been overjoyed to find his friends still alive, maybe not safe, but alive was better than slaughtered by the Daleks. But he didn't know if the other planet's had living survivors on them, or the Daleks had simply dive-bombed them and blasted them into ashes out of boredom.

But his relief turned into horror when he realised Davros was still alive, taken out of the Time War by Dalek Caan after that mess in Manhatten, something that the Doctor found hard to believe since the war was Time Locked. Nothing could or should have been able to get in or out of the Time Lock. Just the thought of a Dalek getting into the Time War again, rescuing Davros and getting out filled him with dread, because it wouldn't take much imagination for someone like Rassilon finding out about the breach in the Time Lock so he could return to the universe, and complete the Ultimate sanction.

Rassilon was a genius by the standards of the Time Lords despite the numerous rumours of the centuries that had been passed down by numerous members of his people, that Rassilon was a thief, a political opportunist who had stolen the works of people like Omega during the days of the time program which started the Gallifreyans onto the journey into mastering time travel.

Rassilon may have been a thief song the same par as a kid who stole a friend's homework, but the Doctor knew better than to underestimate him, especially after all he'd endured in the anti-time universe where his image of the founder of his race had been tainted, to say nothing of the nightmare of the Time War.

Just remembering how his people were willing to end the universe to save just one race when millions depended on the Time Lords to end the war made him physically sick at how desperate and arrogant his people had become. The Time Lords had never really thought about the other races, deeming them insignificant primitives who could never understand, but they would understand if the Time Lords destroyed them just to save themselves.

And that was the biggest sin of them all.

Those same species the Time Lords deemed inferior would understand if they found out about the mad plan of Rassilon to destroy everything in the universe.

The Doctor shuddered as he remembered finding out about the plan the crazy Time Lord founder had come up with during the last years of the war. He had known that Rassilon was power crazed, arrogant, and his mindset came from a different era, but he hadn't expected the Time Lord to create a plan like that when there was little chance of it actually working. Beings consciousness alone, ha! It had been just after Cinder's death; the Doctor had been sick and disgusted with himself and his people for degenerating into savages who loved the war, and his wartime incarnation had wanted to end it before anything more went wrong.

Thinking about the Time War and Rassilon's plans wouldn't do him any good now, but he vowed to keep a close watch on the status of the Time lock to make sure there wasn't anything wrong with it so something inside couldn't get out. The Doctor had to think about the recent mess to get his mind off thinking about the madness of the founder of his race.

After speaking to Davros for the first time in a very very long time after his eighth incarnation's stupid attempt to rescue the Dalek's creator from the jaws of the Nightmare child, something he'd never try to do anymore, though it barely made any difference now he'd turned the Z-neutrino beam back onto the Dalek's creator.

And he'd also met Rose.

 _The Doctor stared dispassionately at the Dalek he'd just shot, the blaster from the Time War still in his hands and smoking from the three energy blasts he'd fired into the Dalek's casing. He had kept the blaster in the TARDIS and had lost track of it, but he had the suspicion the TARDIS had known one day it would be needed again. It surprised the Doctor that Davros hadn't bothered to equip the Daleks with shields_ _like the standard Daleks during the war, but felt that the Dalek's creator was either losing his touch or he had assumed the inhabitants of_ _those twenty six planets wouldn't put up much of a threat._

 _Or maybe he believed that the Doctor would never ever use a gun based on personal and past experience._

 _Big mistake - just because his fourth incarnation had hesitated to destroy the hatchery all those years ago, and later on his fifth self had given into morality which only caused the universe more grief when Davros landed on Necros and used Tranquil repose as a Dalek hatchery, didn't mean that he would always be holier than thou._

 _But then Davros had never seen his war time incarnation - in that incarnation he would have left Davros to the mercy of the Nightmare Child._

 _He glanced at Rose and saw the look on her face, the wide eyed expression of shock as she looked at the blaster. When the Doctor had laid eyes on Rose, the actual Rose Tyler for the first time properly since that day in Torchwood - the parallel world in Norway didn't count, that was just him sent via a holographic projection - the girl had started running towards him, a smile on her face, but he hadn't moved an inch, too annoyed by what she had tried to do_ to _Donna, and for just being so stupid to not bother to phone him. And then the Dalek had attacked, but the Doctor had surprised both Rose and Donna with the blaster in his hands. It was a good thing he hadn't moved, since if he had they could both have been shot._

 _"Hello Rose," he said simply, though he wanted to_ _sa_ y _something much harsher to her, but he felt this was a good place to start._

 _"You're carrying a gun, you never carry guns?"_

 _That was it? After how many years she had spent pining about a man who didn't really love her, that's the first thing she said to him? The Doctor looked pointedly at the very big rifle in her hands. "You can talk," he replied even as Jack walked over to them both, holding a weapon of his own - the Doctor noticed idly it resembled the same_ _weapon Jack had rigged up on Satellite 5 - a look of surprise on his own face at seeing the blaster in the Doctor's hand. "I was kidnapped, Rose, I was beaten up, bloodied and hurt by a mob of humans. I had to kill to just escape. I don't like carrying this thing, but if I can stay alive and keep my friends alive, then so be it."_

 _Rose shook her head in shock. "My god, you're not like this, you're not like my Doctor."_

 _So, just because I don't use a gun, I'm not the Doctor? Stupid girl. The Doctor closed his eyes in annoyance and spent a few seconds counting in his head to just get back some of his sanity. "Face facts Rose, what do you really know about me?"_

 _He turned his back and headed back to the TARDIS, not really caring if Jack or Rose followed him, not anymore. Jack would probably adapt to the news he now carried a weapon on him after he'd explained what had happened to him_ on _Midnight and how deceased members of UNIT soldier's friends and family members had been manipulated by Torchwood One's survivors into capturing and torturing him, but truthfully he was tired of his previous incarnation's sanctimonious, holier than thou mindset when it came to carrying guns, Janus thorns, crossbows, or canisters of_ nitro _nine._

The Doctor hated the thought of taking a life, even if it was to save himself, but perhaps keeping the blaster around for protection was the right way to go.

It wasn't until later when the Daleks had ensnared the TARDIS in their chronic loop that drained his ship of power that he hatched a desperate plan. He'd disappeared in the TARDIS and didn't come back for a few minutes, but he didn't bother telling his companions anything about what he'd done inside.

But then he'd discovered the way Rose had come back and he hadn't been happy.

 _"You used a Dimension cannon?" he hissed at her, and she backpedaled when she caught sight of the anger in his eyes._

 _"Doctor…."_

 _"No," he waved a hand to shut her up, he had had enough of her voice and her stupid obsession with him. It was time for her to grow up and wise up and face reality. "Shut up, just shut your mouth and listen. Do you even know how a cannon like that works? It smashes the walls of reality. They're like ordinary_ cannons _, and just because they don't look like they're doing anything doesn't mean they're not causing damage. Did you not bother thinking about what you were doing?!_ "

 _"It worked," Rose replied while even Jack looked at her in concern and annoyance. "I'm back, see?" she asked desperately._

 _"Oh, I can see," the Doctor snapped. "I see a childish little fool playing games with forces beyond her comprehension. I also see an idiot who doesn't actually know anything about me at all, otherwise she would NEVER have arranged the death of a good person in another universe! Donna also told me how you manipulated her parallel self into killing herself, just to repair the damage the Trickster did!"_

 _Rose gasped in shock at what he said, but the Doctor didn't care. "You couldn't do it, could you?" he hissed at her, ready to unleash years of annoyance, impatience, anger and frustration on the stupid woman_ _people thought he loved more than life itself without bothering to see_ _he didn't feel anything for her at all._

 _In the past, she was just a friend, that was it._

 _End of story._

 _Now, she was nothing more than an annoyance._

 _"But I love you," Rose had the stupidity to interrupt him._

 _"You love me, do you?" The Doctor whispered. "You claim you love me, you claim you know me, and yet you think_ it's _okay to manipulate someone I consider my best friend into killing herself without considering other options?"_

 _"I-I did the only thing I could think of to get things right. I only did what you would've done," Rose stuttered before she realized she had just said the wrong thing because even Jack was shaking his head, sighing while Donna glared at her, openly angry with her now._

 _"Oh Rose," the former Time agent whispered._

 _"What?" Rose asked, clearly clueless._

 _"What makes you think," the Doctor snapped, incandescent with rage now for her even thinking he would ever have done what she had, dragging Rose's attention back to him, openly appalled by her methods and her lack of compassion, "I'd be okay with you manipulating another person into dying, just so then you'd leave another parallel world? I might have manipulated situations, patted myself on the back for being clever, but only when I had considered the options. You had other options, Rose, instead you chose the easy route out. You could have blown the road the parallel Donna was driving along, so then she'd turn the other direction. You could have contacted Jack even for help, at least he in any time frame is experienced enough to find other ways to have gotten out of a parallel world like that one, and he wouldn't have said to just kill Donna. You could have staged a phone call to her, for god's sake, pretending to be H.C Clements, offering her a better job, or manipulated the company advertising that other job in_ _taking on someone else. That would've worked, it would also have canceled out the Trickster's meddling._ I _nstead_ , you _didn't. You chose the easy route out, and it was the quickest way. You didn't bother to think at all, and you think I'm going to thank you for being willing to murder Donna just to get back here to me?"_

 _The Doctor's voice wasn't even a shout. It was quieter than a whisper, but the latent menace in his tone was enough to keep everyone in the TARDIS silent. The Time Lord then looked away, unable to stand looking at the stupid girl, hoping to use the silence to gather his thoughts. Then something did occur to him, something truly serious._

 _"Donna's memories of that parallel world are fading, but she remembers enough to tell me you gave UNIT access to the TARDIS, my TARDIS! What makes you think you know anything about time travel just because you'd travelled with me? Do you not even know or grasp how much damage you could have caused? You allowed those humans to cannibalize my ship, the only home I've got left, and you thought I'd thank you for that? You tore her apart to make some stupid magic trick that could have killed Donna before she even got close to her younger self! That time machine was crude, built with the remains of a dying TARDIS, by imbeciles who have as much knowledge of time travel as an Ogron. It wasn't stable, what made you think it was? Come on, you idiot, use your common sense for a change!"_

 _The Doctor was furious, he had never felt this much anger towards one of his companions before._

 _Donna gasped in horror, she hadn't considered the danger involved in the time machine Rose and UNIT had cobbled together to send her other self back in time. Jack wrapped an arm around her shoulders to offer her some comfort while he regarded Rose with contempt for what she'd done._

 _The Doctor barely noticed, he was too busy glaring at Rose as the girl's eyes watered and tears trickled down her face. "You've done some unbelievably stupid and reckless things in your time, Rose, but this one is one of the worst. One thing I can't understand is why you didn't just simply use your mobile to call the TARDIS."_

 _"What?" Jack gaped at the blonde, who winced. "You didn't use your mobile to call him when all this was happening? Rose, that phone has universal roaming, all you'd need to do was get back here and call him when you knew this was the right parallel."_

 _Rose looked down at her feet, feeling very stupid, but the Doctor didn't really care what was running through her mind at the moment._

 _"What is the darkness anyway?" The Doctor asked her, hoping to move back to this subject later._

 _Still shaken by the onslaught, Rose mumbled about how the darkness was blotting out the stars, but she couldn't really describe it since she didn't understand it herself. What worried the Doctor the most was the fact this darkness_... _it was seeping into the parallel universes as well, even the void was dead, and the Doctor was pleased he wasn't the only person in the TARDIS to feel worried about this. Jack was looking nervous and concerned._

 _Rose in her infinite wisdom didn't realize that since the walls of reality were closed off and parallel travel was impossible without the Time Lords, anything the Daleks did to wipe out the stars in this universe would only affect this universe. Instead, because of her dimensional crossings, Rose had ripped holes in dozens of realities just to get back._

 _The Dalek Void ship had known the precise universe to get back to, but they had still fractured two universes, and probably caused that original crack in time the TARDIS fell through years ago. But Rose and Torchwood didn't know because the science behind inter-universe travel was beyond their abilities. They had shot holes into countless realities, so that meant whatever Davros was doing this time would affect them all._

 _The Doctor cursed his previous selves for not dealing with Davros; his eighth self had tried to SAVE the twisted Kaled. Why? Would the insane cripple have thanked him? No. Would he cause more destruction? Yes. His seventh self had been more interested in scoring a direct hit on Skaro with the Hand of Omega rather than kill the Dalek's creator, his sixth incarnation had been more interested in getting the last word, and his fifth self had been too wrapped up in morals and not considering the suffering Davros would cause if he was allowed to live. If Davros lived then millions more people would die throughout the universe, and he had had the opportunity to kill the sick thing._

 _And his fourth self….. Well, he'd hesitated and had tried to wipe out the Daleks without a proper plan._

 _Not any more._

 _It was time for Davros to die._

 _"How do you think the Daleks are doing_ _this, Doctor?" the former Time Agent asked._

 _"I don't know," the Doctor sighed, his mind feeling numb and exhausted. He was just too_ _fed up with clearing up the mess every time, but he was the only one who could. But this time, he was nearing the end of his rope. He was sick and tired and angry. He had Daleks on the left, threatening to wipe out all life, he had Davros newly returned and had succeeded where Dalek Sec and the rest of the Cult of Skaro had failed, bringing the Daleks back after the Battle of Canary Wharf._

 _On the other side, and this really struck in his craw, was Rose. She had spat on his wishes, she had ignored his talk of the dangers of coming back simply because she claimed she loved him._

 _He was tired of it._

 _"What worries me is the damage Rose caused when she fractured the walls of reality, it could have been what allowed a single Dalek to rescue Davros from the Time War."_

 _Rose overheard him, though that wasn't difficult since she was meant to hear him. Rose didn't really know the full story behind the Time War; it would take far too long for him to get it all out, and besides most of it was confusing. It was ironic, but for a Time War time travel wasn't really used that much - the Daleks may have been driven by universal conquest, but even they thought twice about causing damage to the Web of Time, and the Time Lords adherence to the Web was beyond reverence. Rose only believed that the Daleks were the only horrors of_ _the war, but she was mistaken, and it had probably never entered her mind until now that her meddling and her bull in a china shop approach had damaged the walls holding the Time Locked war away from the present events._

 _"What? I didn't-" she tried to protest, but_ _the Doctor rounded on her. "Rose, the Time War was shielded by a barrier, nothing in this universe can break it, but an attack from another universe can."_

 _Rose glared at him. "You can't blame me for this!"_

 _But Jack had other concerns. "Can the other Daleks get out of the Time Lock?" he asked, sounding both scared and worried for the future. He'd only met the Daleks once before, but he'd heard all about them before he'd started travelling in the TARDIS, so his experience with them was non existent. Jack had heard legends of the Daleks, knew they were an aggressive, xenophobic race who wanted to destroy everything not like them._

 _The idea the Daleks from the War could find their way out was a scary one for him._

 _The Doctor, meanwhile,_ _was cursing Jack for reminding him of another bigger danger, but he said in a cold tone that didn't even reveal to the humans how he was really thinking about this. "Believe me, Jack," he said, "I hope not. There were much bigger terrors_ _in the Time War than just the Daleks," he almost smiled when he saw the looks of fear on the faces of his companions at the news that the Daleks weren't the only truly major threat, "and you, Rose Tyler, because of your stupid obsessiveness, they might come out!" he finished with a shout._

 _The Doctor knew it was harsh and unfair to blame all this on Rose, but Rose needed to see some glimmer of reality and finally see the consequences, but he was sick and tired of her fawning over him, doing things without even considering the consequences of her actions, believing they were meant to be together when all he felt for her at the moment was contempt. Besides, what made her so sure he loved her back? All those times they'd ran around laughing without a care didn't count - there had to be more there than just that, but the thing was ever since Rose had brought Jack and Adam into the TARDIS to make him jealous, any romantic feeling he might have had disappeared. Why did humans have to play such distasteful games when it came to romance? What was the point? If Rose honestly thought she was making progress, then_ _she had met a man_ _who wasn't going to fall for her games. Have a normal life, and just forget him._

 _The Doctor shook his head out of those thoughts, they weren't relevant right now, he_ _had more important things on his mind than what Rose was feeling._

 _What had him_ _more concerned was just thinking that the_ _more twisted Time Lords like Rassilon among_ others might _learn about the fracture in the Time Lock, and use that as a hammer and chisel to get themselves out of the war and into the universe where they could finish the job of destroying the universe. Daleks and Davros he could handle, but he was unsure if he could handle Rassilon._

Droplets of water trickled into his eyes, making him blink them out, as he focused on what happened later on in the Dalek's crucible. After being dragged onboard, having to hear the Dalek's voices again, the Doctor had been forced to endure the sight of the TARDIS doors slamming shut and seeing his ship be dropped into the Z-neutrino core, where she'd die since her defences and other systems were shut down by the Dalek chronon loop, with Donna trapped inside.

While he'd had to endure the sight and the telepathic feeling of his hearts dying with the TARDIS, the Doctor had been annoyed by Rose's so called attempt to offer him comfort, but he'd rejected her; she was the reason all this was happening, so what made her think her pathetic attempts to comfort him would be welcome? Either way he didn't care.

But at that point his plan came into being. Speaking of which he would need to check on the TARDIS and land her someplace where he could set the molecular stabilisers to repair as much of the damage sustained from the drop into the core of Z neutrino energy. His clones might have shored up some of the damage, but with the TARDIS in hover mode and with Donna being around there had been no way the molecular stabilisers could've worked to repair the damage.

With all the damage the TARDIS had sustained over the years from the Time War onwards to this last mess, the Doctor knew he'd have to be more careful with his ship despite all his attempts to keep her from being torn to shreds. And now, thanks to Rose Tyler, that was almost certainly never going to happen.

The Doctor remembered the Time War, and how many of the Daleks' weapons had been designed to rip open a TARDIS's exo-chronoplasmic shell, to destroy the interior dimension and tear it to shreds. He'd known from the moment the loop had been generated before the TARDIS had been sent off to the Crucible they'd try to destroy the TARDIS. They knew the long history of conflict, they also knew that without the TARDIS he'd be nothing but a hopeless prisoner, just like the other countless Time Lords they'd slaughtered during the Time War.

He'd known the Daleks would summon him out of the TARDIS, known that even if he and his companions had wasted time remaining inside her when she was powered down the Daleks would simply destroy the doors and enter, and probably kill them for defying the Daleks. Rose and Jack had thought the TARDIS still had her indestructible properties, but he'd set them right.

Unfortunately, for some reason, Donna had zoned out and was trapped inside the TARDIS.

But his clones had stopped the Z-neutrinos from ripping the TARDIS to bits. A long time ago in his personal timeline, the Doctor had been cloned to deal with the Swarm, a parasitic micro organism, which had infected him. The Doctor remembered how his clone and a clone of Leela had been miniaturised by the relative dimensional stabiliser and injected into his brain, but the technique used, the Kilbracken technique was, in the words of Professior Marius a circus trick with no real medical value, but the Doctor had guessed correctly that Leela had some immunity to the Swarm, so he'd had her cloned.

The Doctor had used a more advanced method of the Kilbracken technique to give his clones more time than eleven minutes, and he'd made three clones to save the TARDIS, find out what Davros was doing and be in a better position to deal with the Daleks and their creator. While he'd been forced to pretend to grieve for his ship's death, the Doctor had in fact made telepathic contact with the clones, and like him they were horrified by the lengths Davros was prepared to go to, and they made a plan to turn it against him. Unfortunately, that was where things went wrong, and the Doctor still wasn't sure what made UNIT think its new methods would work. Didn't they give a damn about their culture, their people? Blowing up their planet with nuclear warheads just to stop the Daleks? What made it worse was that Martha was the one behind it. The Doctor had thought Martha Jones had a bit more common sense than that, but clearly not.

Ever since he'd been kidnapped by those relatives of the UNIT troops who'd worked and died during his third incarnation's tenure, the Doctor had been questioning his standing with the organisation. He had some really good memories of his exile to Earth during his third incarnation; yeah, he might have been frustrated to the point of madness by the limitations of the period, not helped by the mental blocks the Time Lords imposed on his mind, stopping him from remembering the vital dematerialisation codes needed to repair the dematerialisation circuit, along with his knowledge on time travel lore.

But the Doctor really hated the thought that members of UNIT, particularly high ranking officers like Colonel Mace (he doubted the colonel had something to do with this, but considering his attitude to the man he wouldn't want to risk it) turning a blind eye and supporting torture on his person. If they thought he was going to let them get away with that, then they had no idea what he was capable of.

Walking through the TARDIS aimlessly, the Doctor had more time to reflect on the recent mess. He decided to head for the library - it was large, quiet and best of all empty. Walking inside the Doctor smiled softly at the large and expansive room, and plopped himself down and just let himself relax in the comfortable seat, and he let out a sigh.

He needed this. He needed the peace and quiet after the mess Rose had made of things; he still could not believe her lack of common sense in not phoning him, but the way she'd manipulated that parallel version of Donna into killing herself, well if she thought he'd love her after all that then she needed a brain transplant.

Dealing with Davros again… it had left him numb all over, and bad memories came back to haunt him. Hopefully now his clones had used that z-neutrino biological catalyser into the TARDIS, rather than rely on the hand held version which was used to distract Davros and the Daleks, and make the Kaled scientist and the Daleks think the clone had only one plan to stop the Reality bomb.

The Doctor closed his eyes as he remembered the events leading up to Davros and the Daleks being destroyed by their own weapon - it was genocide, but then again he'd done the same thing to the Daleks before, why would this be different? But he had been disgusted by Sarah Jane, Mickey, Jackie, Jack, Martha and their attempts to bring down the Crucible. The reason he'd been disgusted with them was because they hadn't taken into account their own lives - the clones the Doctor had made had been instructed to deal with Davros and his plan, not to destroy the Dalek ship, but what do the humans do? They threatened the Daleks with destruction.

It was really expected, but truthfully he had made, the better plan.

The Doctor sighed and rubbed his face, the psychological attack and digs Davros had made against him, how he'd made his companions into weapons getting to him because he was right. How many times had his seventh incarnation manipulated Ace, or hurt Hex with his meddling schemes? How many schemes had he made with them paying the price for his arrogance, apologising for each of them, only to fall into the pattern of making schemes without really bothering to care for the longterm consequences?

His seventh incarnation had been what he was out of some attempt to stop himself becoming the Valeyard after discovering the twisted truth of who the prosecutor was during that mess of a trial, but truthfully the Doctor didn't know if those attempts were even worth it after all these years. What about his fifth and sixth incarnations, how many times had he in those two lifetimes dragged his companions into the thick of danger, ignoring the risks and forgetting that not everyone shared his curiosity?

That mindset had resulted in Adric's death when the Cybermen had forced Briggs's freighter to fall back through time unintentionally and resulted in the extinction which destroyed the Earth's dinosaurs, a fixed point in time so he could do nothing to change events, even if meant Adric's death. His fifth incarnation had toyed with saving Adric's life, but with the damage the Cyber leader had caused to the TARDIS console (he really needed to take a look into repairing the State of Temporal grace system - it was getting ridiculous how often people came in waving guns or blasters, but then his fifth self had never cared for maintenance and had left it all until his sixth incarnation had emerged and became more proactive in repairing the TARDIS though that could have been a case of post regeneration thought), he hadn't wanted to risk sending the TARDIS backwards in time after the Master's little trick of using Adric to send them all back to the Big Bang.

But Adric's death had not changed his nonchalant attitude to danger.

How many times did companions like Nyssa, Tegan, Peri ask him to just return to the TARDIS, and get away only for them all to fall into danger? He'd never learnt then, and it wasn't until that mess of a trial where the deaths of Adric, Katarina, and Sara were used on top of that confusing jumble of lies and half truths about Peri's fate was shoved into his fate that he'd realised the full extent of how far the Time Lords and the Valeyard were willing to go.

The Doctor had never imagined hating his people as much as he had then. How hard was it, though when everything you had done, all the people who'd died because of him were used in a trial to bring him down, just so then a twisted abomination that should not even exist would take his remaining regenerations?

Seeing Peri's mind being crushed, everything that had made the American girl who she was, her personality, her hobbies, her interests…..being destroyed by Crozier when the crooked scientist had downloaded Kiv's mind into her body, it had horrified him because he was seeing it like someone watching a really bad horror movie.

It wasn't until his seventh incarnation that he'd toned down the bad habits of his fifth and sixth lives, but the way people died around him never failed to bother him.

The sight of the Reality bomb finally killing Davros had been a god send, because it meant the scientist would probably never come back, but the Doctor wasn't going to celebrate; Davros had escaped all kinds of deaths in the past, but unless the Kaled had imagined there could've been some kind of backlash with the Reality bomb, and found a way to shield himself, then he could still be out there. It was just a question of when he might turn up.

After the Daleks and their creator were destroyed, the Doctor and his clones had worked to return the stolen planets to their rightful places in the universe.

Dalek Caan had been the one manipulating the timelines, that had been a surprise, but it did make sense about all those coincidences since it was only after his meeting with Donna that the whole sequence of events reached their climax. The Doctor wasn't sure if Caan was being sincere about seeing the Daleks for what they really were, since he was a Dalek himself and was responsible for so many deaths himself, but unlike with Dalek Sec after the Cult of Skaro's leader made the decision to become the first evolved Dalek since Davros had even made the discovery of what the Kaled race would become, Caan had never wanted to change, and yet here he was now saying the Daleks were evil.

The Doctor was not sure if Caan was sincere. He could never forget the way that particular Dalek had wiped out the Human-Dalek race after they had just shaken off the same unthinking cruelty all Daleks showed within minutes of being placed into the travel machines. The Doctor had tried to give Caan a chance, but the Dalek had escaped via an emergency temporal shift.

Like Davros, like the New Dalek Empire, like the plan to wipe out all life in the multiverse with the Reality bomb, Dalek Caan was now dead after the Doctor set the self destruct sequence to blow up the Dalek ship. Now the Cult of Skaro was gone. If that was not a major defeat for the Daleks the Doctor did not know what wasn't.

* * *

Landing the TARDIS on a deserted planet - the Doctor took great care to find one and not rush out of his ship looking for danger this time - he set the molecular stabilisers to repair as much of the damage sustained by the drop into the core. As he stood outside, looking around the enormous but beautiful valley with rolling countryside, the Doctor felt himself relax.

It wasn't the Eye of Orion, but it would do for now. The Time Lord had spent an entire week looking for a decent planet, far from the interstellar and intergalactic wars, with a stable sun, little to no tectonic activity, with no intelligent life. That was difficult since the TARDIS was attracted to the artron energy emitted by intelligent life forms.

He looked at the closed TARDIS doors, knowing from experience his beloved ship would not let him in even if there was an emergency, and sighed. The old girl had suffered so much pain and grief over the years because of him, and with Gallifrey gone there was only so much more she could take.

He gave her a gentle pat and walked off. It might be considered boring if just landed on an uninhabited planet, but the Doctor didn't really care about adventure for the moment.

Sitting down on a hill overlooking a calm and placid looking sea, the Doctor smiled and just admired the calm. It had been a while since he'd been allowed to relax and just soak in some quiet. It was there he decided to look back on some of his life choices, and he found them lacking.

The Doctor had always been a paragon of justice, in his mind, but how much of his help, if it could be called that, wanted? How many times had he interfered in other people's affairs and lives just because he thought his intelligence as a Time Lord justified it? The Doctor closed his eyes and remembered the way other Time Lords like the Monk justified trying to alter history like he had during that mess in 1066, or the Rani when she went undercover during periods of hostility on Earth like the Luddite riots simply because she was a Time Lady and had the right to remove brain fluid simply because she could, and most recently the Master justifying his actions during the Year that Never Was.

His former friend had said that his use of the paradox machine, bringing the twisted remains of the human race from the year 100 trillion to slaughter their ancestors under a veneer of doing it for them, that he was a Time Lord and had the right to change history.

The Doctor had slammed him for that. He had memories of the Time Lords doing questionable and terrible things throughout their history, seen the results of their meddling and experienced it himself when they made him their agent to clean up the messes made by others. But hadn't he acted holier than thou in all his regenerations?

He still remembered the business with ATMOS and the Sontarans, how he'd had a go at Mace for carrying a gun, and later on spewed out all that crap at Jenny at how she was not a Time Lord simply because she carried weapons, only for him to become a hypocrite and begin carrying a blaster after that run in with those humans on Midnight and later on Earth. He didn't have the right to do anything like that, and what did he do? He was carrying a gun himself now, to protect himself, and hadn't it already been used? Who was he to criticise others for carrying guns or bombs when he now carried one himself?

He knew if his previous incarnations saw him now with the gun, they'd be horrified and would criticise him outright without even bothering to see the logic of carrying it. They would also criticise his seventh and war time incarnations for their actions, but in the case of his seventh life they'd hate him for manipulating and causing mental harm to Mel, Benny, Ace, and Hex to just simply avoid becoming the Valeyard without realising that by manipulating events wherever he went he might be going down that hill that made the Valeyard a reality. The subject of the Valeyard, a twisted amalgamation of the darker sides of his nature, had always been an uneasy one for the Doctor, and the reason why his seventh life was obsessed with creating plans that manipulated the lives of others for the ends which didn't really justify the means.

It wasn't until his seventh regeneration that the Doctor accepted the fact the Valeyard was just a smoke and mirror projection of a possible future, but then again the Master did say he was a distillation of the darker sides of his nature, given shape. Looking back the Doctor knew it was his fear and terror which allowed his seventh life to become so manipulative, but the problem was he didn't know if his actions since then had resulted in a potential future where something happened to his mind to make him become the Valeyard.

Another thing came into his mind, the subject of companions. Rose was just one example of a companion who simply couldn't be trusted, he'd left her in the parallel world again, this time wiping her mind of the fact they were separated by two universes. Jackie hadn't liked it, but she had not liked the obsessive attitude, her daughter had, and according to her Rose had spent much of her time in the parallel Torchwood working on a way to return to her home universe. Jackie had promised to make sure Pete kept her away from any knowledge of parallel universes in case her memory returned, but the Doctor wasn't so sure.

They hadn't had a lot of luck so far, why start now? What annoyed the Doctor the most was that the Pete Tyler of that world had allowed Rose access to the technology at Torchwood in the first place, and that he had heard what the Doctor had said about those discs he and his team composed of Jake and Mickey since they ripped holes in the universe. Surely Pete had enough common sense to get some idea of what Rose was like?

Anyway, so long as they kept her under control this time, though he'd broken her heart by telling her he did not love her and that she was wasting her time trying to be with him since it would never work and because he found her actions repulsive. The Doctor also thought about companions like Sarah Jane and Martha - he knew they'd been looking out for him, and seeking a way to end the Dalek threat when he'd bungled up the Time Lord mission to Skaro to avert their creation all those centuries ago, but he didn't like their methods since Davros was right, he did turn his companions into weapons to be used and then discarded.

And now Donna was gone, and she had been right about him needing someone around to stop him from going too far. That was the reason she'd refused to travel with him when he'd offered her the chance after that mess with the Rachnoss empress, but the Doctor believed that seeing the way he'd dealt with the Empress's children and feeling the heartbreak of Lance's betrayal had been too much for her. The Doctor was just upset that she had seen him fall in such a way, beginning to carry a gun after a terrible series of events on Midnight and later on Earth before going on to wiping out the Daleks….it was just too much for her. Now she was gone, but at least he hadn't ruined her life, he hoped. He had screwed up so many lives, in all his incarnations…..Maybe it was better if he just travelled by himself now, forever. No exceptions.

If he had ruined Donna's life….. then he would never forgive himself. Donna deserved much better than the sort of misery he'd landed unintentionally at the feet of other companions, so in a way he was glad she had gone before something did happen to her. But the Doctor was nonetheless sad she'd left, but he couldn't fault her reasons. And then he realised something important, he couldn't travel with anyone ever again. The thought made the Doctor sad but he needed to admit that unless he wanted another Rose or another Adric he would need to avoid travelling with other people to mitigate a number of issues.

He couldn't allow another Rose in to his life, a companion who believed they could love him and think he was so incapable of living without them around to hold his hand - River Song sprang to mind - and need company now the Time Lords were gone, all the while thinking that he loved her in return when in fact he didn't. If he allowed another stupid minded human girl into his life then he might not have a TARDIS afterwards. Rose's actions like with her father and the Reapers had only highlighted the kind of damage this pre-Time War universe could cost the TARDIS, but it had never stopped. Look at the way she'd wanted him to go back to the parallel world they'd left, ignoring and completely forgetting Mickey's wishes to stay with his grandmother. Rose hadn't given much thought about the possibility of them being stranded.

And what about her attitude to his duties as a Time Lord after that mess with Reinette? Their relationship began to decline slightly at the time, and it only got worse before that first trip to Pete's world.

But it was the thought of another Adric which got to him. The death of the young Alzarian boy would always haunt him, but in his fifth life the Doctor knew it was all his fault since he had insisted investigating the mystery behind the caves, the bomb and the androids created by the Cybermen, who would go on to send an army of their kind towards Earth to just break down an interstellar conference of which Earth was in the middle of. Worse, he had led Adric around the hold where the Cybermen were being held.

And what about that mess on Androzani Minor, when he decided to follow those monoskid tracks into the caves of that barren waste of a planet? Peri and he had stumbled across a Spectrox nest, unknowing that the stuff was deadly, and then finding that stockpile of gas weapons which gave Morgus the excuse to order Chellak to execute them both. The Doctor had dragged Peri into danger, caused her to fall into a nest and suffered the effects of spectrox toxaemia which was certain death, forced to endure Sharaz Jek's attention though all the crippled genius wanted was company after Morgus had deliberately tried to kill him by unknowingly get caught by one of the many mud bursts of that miserable planet.

The Doctor had felt that he'd redeemed himself by giving her the milk from the Queen Bat, only to regenerate himself. But that wasn't the point; he had endangered Peri's life and not for the first time either since his sixth life did it on a near daily basis. How many time was Peri frightened of what could happen to her?

No, it was best if he never travelled with anyone again. His last self had decided to do the same thing before inviting Rose to travel with him, to help clear up the pain from the war.

No more.

* * *

Authors Note - I wanted to add this general angst because it annoyed me the Doctor never learnt from his mistakes, even when it cost him his life, but this seems to have evened out after the Peter Davison and Colin Baker years.

Nyssa, Tegan, and Adric were companions of the Fifth Doctor, and Adric was killed when he tried to solve a logic code on a computer the Cybermen had fixed to a freighter's navigational computer. A Cybermen destroyed the computer and because of the Cybermen damaging the TARDIS - guns can be fired - the Fifth Doctor couldn't get him back.

Later on Peri was a companion of both the Fifth and Sixth Doctors, and the adventure in question was the Caves of Androzani. There the Doctor became interested in two tracks from a monoskid, and even when they found the gas weapons in the caves, they didn't run for it or try to walk slowly away back to the TARDIS, and were caught by soldiers fighting a war against androids and their creator, a brilliant but unstable and scarred genius called Sharaz Jek.

The Sixth Doctor's aloofness and general nonchalance got them into danger so many times, and he didn't tell Peri that the planet in Mindwarp, Thoros Beta was Sil's homeworld. He seemed to think she knew.


End file.
